Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Dude in the commercial totally looks like me. It's uncanny, but it's not me.

Pause the video at about 20 seconds to see the guy. (You can thank viewer Tommy for bringing the video to my attention, Tris from Facebook for setting the relevant images side by side, and Randy for bringing up the next video.)

Even though it's not me, it's an added bonus that this commercial totally pissed off Catholics.

Summary: The commercial was a result of a contest Doritos ran to make a Superbowl commercial. The guy who made the commercial is reportedly a Catholic, but the commercial itself takes a rather silly perspective on communion, with Doritos and Pepsi being the body and blood of Christ.

As is their wont, Catholics are OUTRAGED that people make fun of their beliefs. Fox Newsmodel Megyn Kelly listens respectfully to a typical angry Catholic who insists that Catholics are the only group that it's okay to make fun of, and no one would ever tolerate jokes at the expense of Islam. (Quick, somebody notify Jeff Dunham that his act has been canceled!)

This quote is just priceless, though:

"I think it is mocking to say that the blood of Jesus Christ is Diet Pepsi."

As everyone knows, the blood of Christ is made from fermented grapes, while his flesh is made from a mixture of wheat flour, yeast, water, and salt. That is respectful to the lord and savior of all mankind. But as any fool can plainly see, Jesus' flesh clearly does not contain corn, vegetable oil, cheese powder, buttermilk powder, whey protein concentrate, tomato powder, flavour enhancer #621, or dextrose. And don't even get me started on any speculation that his blood might contain any high fructose corn syrup or caramel color.

52 comments:

The bit about excuses only a lawyer can appreciate wasn't bad, either. Because we all know religious apologists have nothing but disdain for convoluted excuses...By the way: That other guy doesn't look so much like you, he looks a lot hotter. You could look hotter, too, if you just...Sorry.Wrong Thread.

As a former good little Catholic boy, and having smelled and tasted the blood of Christ, I can tell you I wished it had been Pepsi. The wine used at Mass tastes more like the piss of Christ, the morning after he had a few nasty drinks.

It’s funny how more than half of super bowl commercials are about alcohol and that didn’t trouble him. If a mom was on there saying that the Budweiser commercials offended her because a drunk driver killed her kid, the media would not even care. However, have a priest handing out Doritos; oh no then somehow it is offensive to the sensitive Catholics.

"As everyone knows, the blood of Christ is made from fermented grapes, while his flesh is made from a mixture of wheat flour, yeast, water, and salt."

Well, for the most part. I hear some people/congregations/whatever use unfermented grape juice or even plain tap water.

As for yeast... it's definitely uncatholic to use it. It's those apostates in the Easter Orthodox church, and other such bound for hell heretics, who use common bread for the magic transmutation trick. Pardon me, transubstantiation -- we're talking about serious theology here, not such ridiculous nonsense like alchemy. Right?

When you have to defend outrageous beliefs like crackers turning into flesh and wine into blood, what choice do you have besides getting really offended? When evolution is mocked the biologists roll out the evidence. All the Catholics can do is say "HOW DARE YOU!". If mockery is allowed, the next thing you know people will be questioning all the unfounded assertions!

And of course Faux news will never miss a chance to convince people that someone is out to get them, and they better stay extra paranoid and intolerant of views unlike their own.

As much as I hate to admit it, I have to agree with Lars Larson when he said "I find it offensive to think of somebody suggesting that the body of Jesus Christ is in fact Cool Ranch Doritos , its ridiculous and its offensive and its sacrilegious."

I couldn't agree more. Nacho Cheese definitely, maybe even Spicy Sweet Chili, but to even suggest Cool Ranch is ridiculous and I too am offended.

It makes you wonder, if a real life Pastor did this, claiming that God had actually spoke to him and told him to do it, what exactly would their reaction be? I mean, their god has commanded much worse things in the past - mind you his past commandments have never included mocking himself so Christians would probably be justified in claiming said priest as a non-prophet (badda-boom. Did you see what I just did there....)

Sorry for the double post, but I just finished the interview. Another great quote from Mr. Larsen: "This isn't about making religion more approachable for those who believe, it's about selling a product."

It never ceases to amaze me how the religious fail to see their religion as a product that's trying to be sold.

I will never understand the increasingly popular "THEY WOULDN'T PULL THIS SHIT ON *MUSLIMS*!" argument. What the hell does this even mean?

Are they saying that there is an unfair double-standard in that some religions are mocked more than others? Well, maybe you should have thought about how mock-worthy your religion is before you dedicated your life to it, if mockery bothers you so very much.

Or are they making a point about how much more civilized they are than muslims, because *they* don't try to kill their critics literally, just figuratively? So what? That would be like saying, "Hell yeah, I killed someone in cold blood, but you know what? At least I'm not a *serial killer*!"

tl;dr: I don't understand why presenting evidence of your own bigotry is a defense against criticisms of how stupid your believes are.

I'm glad they are offended. Their beliefs are fucking dumb. If they weren't then they would be hard to make fun of. Also, if they had a good reason for believing in what they do, they could come up with something better than "I'M OFFENDED!"

@Daemon6 I came back here to say the same thing. My RSS feed to this article has a picture of the Russel doppleganger eating a Dorito. All the Catholics are doing by crying about this ad is selling more Doritos! I never would have known about this ad if it wasn't for them.

There is precedent of much more than this, not just in a commercial but in a real Catholic church in Spain.

I am sorry the news don't seem to be available in English, but anyone who understands Spanish can look up what happened in the St. Charles Borromeo church in Vallecas (south of Madrid, in Spain).

They decided to substitute the wafers for "rosquillas" (the word is untranslatable into English... it is a kind of thin donut-like thing). Note that it was the priests themselves who did this, not any atheist or anyone outside the church hierarchy.

This caused outrage, but the really annoying thing apparently was that the priests allowed atheists and even muslims to attend the service, and dressed in normal street clothes while performing the ceremony. That, along with the "donut communion" caused enough outrage for the Bishop to have the church closed.

Doritos? That is nothing. They even look a bit wafer-like. Compared to donuts, Doritos are practically undistinguisable from the "official" wafer.

It is unusual to share the wine in Spanish Catholic churches, so I don't know if they had any plans to use something else along with the donuts. They surely would go well with Pepsi.

However, since wine is often cheaper than Pepsi in Spain, I doubt they would think of replacing it.

If the priests themselves went as far as using donuts for communion, I don't see why anyone should be shocked about using other alternatives. They make just as much sense as the "official" wafer, which is made in the very same bakeries from the very same ingredients, in any case.

What would be the effect of serving anything other that a consecrated wafer, let's say a consecrated bagel, or a consecrated donut?I read an 1800 word article detailing the meaning and the effects of the eucharist. Great, I thought, they're going to talk about effects, so we can start testing things. No such luck though, as the whole article contained not one testable claim. Just mystical mumbo-jumbo clouded in definitively meaningless jargon and packaged in aimless emotionalism.http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/realpres/eucheff.htmlYou tell me, is there anything in there that's useful? Anything that increases our knowledge, improves our behavior, or our ethics? Anything that informs us about anything existing in the real world?

Bill's reasoning is so patently absurd that I can't even wrap my head around it completely.."There's never a miscommunication" Does he mean to imply that if there wasn't a god that the tides would both rise and fall at the same time? Does he also mean to say that the sun would be both up and down at the same time? It makes me wonder if he actually thinks the sun is going up and down O.o Is Bill O'Reilly a flat-earther?

I would have to believe that the commercial is offensive. To devout religious people; mocking their religion is extremely offensive. It can be hard to see it as offensive if that is not your religion or if you are not religious, so let me try to put it into perspective...

God is as real to a devout religious person as your parents are to you. Just imagine someone making fun of your parents. We all have our little quirks so lets expand on that. Lets say your Mom smacks her food when she chews because she got into a car accident 13 years ago while taking little billy to go shopping for a Knights of the Round Merlin.

Then someone at Frito Lay gets the bright idea that he can make money off of making fun of your Mom.

If they really wanna thicken the ole flock the should switch the blood of christ to ayahuasca, a sometimes red in color botantical concoction containing a powerful hallucinogenic that some Peruvian Amazonian tribes drink habitually, this tactic may certainly lead to more people being able to accept such abhorrent views of reality.

Being an ex-catholic I squeemed a bit at the ad, and laughed as well, the reason being that from experience I have the whole communion thing associated with regular self-guilt and loathing (putting off confession, worrying whether I'm "clean" enough to go to communion), so I actually felt some kind of offense - as if the ad was mocking my whole adolescence and early life - a time when I didn't know better and the fear of hell kept me in. But of course it is hilarious. I loved Armand K. call it the "magic transmutation trick" - lol reminds me of all the climategate nonsense.=8)-DX

Good grief, "He gave us the democratic party"... The hypocrisy of that fellow is incredible. And what's with his ridiculous argument that he has a friend who drinks Pepsi all day long and she doesn't think it's the blood of Christ? Does he think that drunkards think that all the wine they're drinking is the blood of Jesus?!

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PLEASE NOTE: The Atheist Experience has moved to a new location, and this blog is now closed to comments. To participate in future discussions, please visit http://www.freethoughtblogs.com/axp.The Atheist Experience is a weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin. This independently-run blog (not sponsored by the ACA) features contributions from current and former hosts and co-hosts of the show.